Unlike the rest of South Africa, the Western Cape will be experiencing two stages of stage 3 load-shedding to reduce the percentage of consumers affected by power outages, Eskom Western Cape’s head Alwie Lester said on Monday.

“We don’t want to take out too many customers than necessary. We don’t want to over shed. So if we only require a 1000MW, we will try not to shed more than that,” said Lester.

There are three stages of load-shedding in South Africa. These stages are stages one; two and three. However, in the Western Cape, stage three is split into two parts; mainly stage 3A and stage 3B. In stage 1 a 1000MW is being saved, 2000MW during stage two and 3 000 up to 4000MW during stage three.

Although the Western Cape is currently in stage one, 10 to 12% of the national load is in the Western Cape. To reduce the impact the split in stage three is to prevent a shattering infiltrate on to a vast amount of consumers unnecessarily.

“A typical demand in the Western Cape is 3500MW per day that is about 10 to 12 % of the load is in the province,” said Lester.

Load shedding for the rest of the week cannot be determined as the prognosis is determined on a daily basis.

“The prognosis is always medium to high,” said Lester.

“We come in every morning from about 6am and then we decide what the prognosis is and if there will be any possible load shedding.”

Consumers are urged to use electricity sparingly.

“Make sure you switch off all electrical components at the wall socket as there is still live current running through it and keep one light on,” advised Lester.

Turning off appliances when they are not in use and close to load shedding times would prevent any power surges that create mechanical faults.

“People find they leave appliances on and when the light comes back on the appliances are damaged. If we could just be 10% more efficient, we could save electricity and reduce load shedding. Don’t switch on light unnecessarily, don’t open the fridge door too many times and switch off applicants at the wall socket when you are done using them,” said Lester.

Load shedding will be implemented from after 5pm on Monday. VOC (Nailah Cornelissen)